First off, this is a sad day for college football. Losing a storied conference is not something to celebrate.
Second, i'm not worried about the ACC in the short term at all. At the end of the decade, maybe, but not right now.
What has happened over the last 2 weeks have shown a number of thing to be evident.
First, PAC made alot of mistakes and is now gone because of them. With a big assist from the B1G taking USC and UCLA and then B12 jumping them in line for TV contracts (basically B12 locked up the last of the content needed by the linear channels - ESPN, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC now all have as much content as they need).
Second, we now have a much more real valuation of what college football programs are worth in this current environment - about $30M for a good program. B1G picked up OR and WA at a nice price. $30M to start and then a $1M increase each year until the next TV contract when all B1G schools will get a full share. That means in 7 years WA and OR will be making less than what the ACC is getting now (with much larger travel costs). That also explains why the ACC chose not to expand with PAC teams - they would have reduced the per team payout. B1G basically picked up WA and OR on the cheap after passing on them a yr ago.
Third, it appears the bubble has burst. Much like the financial crisis of 2008 where alot of the Mortgage models had as an assumption that home prices could never decrease (which was horribly wrong) - the idea that media deals are always going to increase is false. It is clear the ESPN does not have money to go bidding for schools. They likely could have had the PAC for less money than the B12 is getting, but they couldn't even afford that, or chose not to.
These 3 things also have huge implications for conference realignment in the short-to-medium term.
I think it makes it much less likely SEC will expand anytime soon, unless whoever they bring in is willing to come in at less than a full share. Since their primary contract is with ESPN, and ESPN is currently not in a great financial place, it makes it unlikely that the SEC can expand and keep their per school payouts at the current levels.
This is also something for teams that are whining (ahem, FSU) to think about, are you really as valuable as you think you are? They obviously believe they are worth $50-60M per year. But what we have seen this week suggests that is probably too high. I think they are worth more than WA and OR, but not $20-30M more - their viewership numbers do not support that (Their six year viewership avg is 33% higher than OR, and their 2020 viewership was 1/2 of Oregons). Probably worth more in the $40M range - which is basically what they are getting in the ACC.